Fortress Liberalism

This is a curious article by the historian Matt Karp, arguing against Hillary Clinton’s “fortress liberalism,” which itself a play of Rich Yeselson’s “fortress unionism” strategy for the labor movement. Karp argues that only a mass politics creates scenarios for major changes. That’s what Bernie Sanders represents and those who dismiss Sanders because there is nothing he can do to make Republicans vote for his policies in Congress are short-sighted. Rather, this so-called fortress liberalism won’t accomplish anything either. It has no potential to do so even if it succeeds.

I guess I am torn about this piece. In some ways, Karp is correct. Change does require mass mobilization and those uncomfortable with protest politics like Jonathan Chait simply don’t understand how large-scale change happens. The Civil Rights Act required baiting Bull Connor to sic dogs on children. The National Labor Relations Act required the 1934 strikes that led to the deaths of workers. The growth in legislation providing civil rights protections for LGBT people required the mass action of ACT-UP in order to spur recognition that queer people were real and suffering. It is workers in the streets who are leading the charge to raise the minimum wage, which is happening in states from California to Arkansas. So yes, more mass action, please!

But Karp either doesn’t recognize or doesn’t respond to two obvious rejoinders. First, all of those mass actions were outside of the electoral system. While it is certainly true that workers responded to FDR, it’s also worth noting that the 1932 election was more a rejection of Hoover and the 1936 election, which was genuinely a worker outpouring of a support for a politician, took place only after FDR’s original intention to allow corporate self-rule through the NRA was thrown out by the Supreme Court, after the 1934 strikes forced his hand to take a stronger stand toward labor, and after the Social Security Act was passed to undermine other retirement-based political movements. In other words, FDR adjusted to workers. He did not lead a workers’ movement. Truman, LBJ, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, any of these presidents were reticent to do much of anything for social and economic justice unless they were pushed. It seems to me that Karp makes the classic mistake of thinking that a president can lead a social movement. I think that is an error. That’s no reason not to vote for Sanders. I am voting for him on Tuesday. But if we think that change happens primarily through electing the right savior, then the inevitable disappointment will result when that individual can’t create that change.

That gets to the second point which is that Karp really doesn’t want to deal with the gerrymandering issue. The reality is that there is simply no reason for most Republicans to care what Democratic president is in power. They aren’t scared because they are gerrymandered into safe districts. They have to care about being primaried from the right. That situation isn’t inevitably stable, but it’s very real. So while Karp talks about how recalcitrant legislators had to be cajoled into supporting reform of the past, he is avoiding the real differences between the past and present on this issue while playing up the different political realities in other forms. It’s not a dishonest argument, but it is a dodge.

It’s not that voters should support a “fortress liberalism,” if that is what we want to call Hillary Clinton’s worldview. It’s that we should a) recognize that any president is going to need outside pressure to accomplish anything, b) that no president will ever save us, and therefore , c) the need for mass action will quite likely be just as necessary and just as effective (or not, depending on the level of mass action) under a Sanders presidency as it is under a Clinton presidency.